A standard walk through visual inspection by a building professional [not necessarily a surveyor] will fall within the range of €250-500, depending on who is doing it and the length of time they take 1-4 hours.
On a second purchase of an older building normally this is
- a snag list coupled with
- visually apparent building defect list
- any non-compliant items in the original house or that have arisen
- damage/settlement/shrinkage defects that have arisen in the life of a building.
Normally this doesn't involve opening up works but should involve an attic inspection covering the water tanks and overflow, service cabling routing and labelling as well as a look in the drains for apparent blocking up.
Visual inspection of the interior and exterior of the house and the estate is usually done as part of the inspection.
The inspection of a new house is similar without the defects arising over time.
The person inspecting may also ask to see any details, plans etc. that are available to allow them to comment on possible future issues arising due to work covered up that could give problems.
I'm not sure what a structural surveyor does, not the relevance thereof if the survey is limited to visually apparent structural defects only - unless its a dreaded pyrite problem, but even there a structural specialist may not cover the whole range of issue arising.
This is because pyrite stems from a structural problem <please do not lt us go off topic on this for goodness sake, there are other threads dealing with it - oh I'm sorry I mentioned it now...> but the effects aer likely to affect a lot of other regulations. There are twelve Building Regulations, but Structure is only covered by Part A.
Someone specialising in Part A may not have a clue about the effect of building movement of services or fire separation, insulation or infiltration. A fuller survey on a building with problems may involve an initial inspection by a structural engineer or architect and then the one may bring in the other as other issues arise. We have been involved in houses with difficulties and a full design team went in, because there were difficulties with services also and so a Mechanical and Electrical Engineer became involved.
That cost the client a lot more than €500 but in the end the house was brought into compliance with the building regulations to a standard acceptable to the Building Control Officer, potentially huge liability to the developer was avoided, while the purchaser got the house they wanted at a good price.
ONQ
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